Posts categorized “Music”

Link of the Month:
Project Rooftop
As Project Runway is to fashion, Project Rooftop is to Superhero fashion. This site is dedicated to imagining redesigns of comic book uniforms and outfits. It has news on all new costumes worn by comic book superheroes, and it also takes submissions come from all over (you can submit stuff yourself if you want). It’s shockingly engaging to read and look at.

Album of the Month:
Julia Massey & The Five Finger Discount: Is There Room For Me?
*Contented sigh* The 2nd album from the Seattle superstars is every bit the masterpiece that their first one was. Another album funded through a grassroots Kickstarter campaign that exceeded what it asked for, this album is destined to be my album of the year. Just like their last album.

Game of the Month:
The Humble Indie Bundle
Not just one game, the Humble Indie Bundle is a periodic release of a handful of the best video games from independent game makers. You can get some games that are really unique, and best of all it’s name your price for the whole set! Pay what you think they’re worth or what you can afford. This is a great way to get exposed to some games you wouldn’t otherwise ever know about.

Some backstory: Polka Glocks is a hip-hop group comprised of three people living in entirely different parts of the country: Davy Hamburgers (Pittsburgh), Jason Sabbides (Tennessee) and Three Ninjas (Seattle). They also have some kinda members who live in Wales and Virginia. Their collaborations happen over the internets.

After Three Ninjas did some collaboration with them (and was then formally inducted into the group) I started listening to them and became internet-friendly with Davy Hamburgers. During that time I was ramping up my 8-bit chiptune Saucecore project.

I had composed a chiptune song that I liked but I had no idea what to do with it because it didn’t really fit the style that I was going for. So I thought, hey, I’ll send it to Davy Hamburgers; maybe he can figure out something to do with it. Gosh, that musta been about a year ago. And honestly I completely forgot that I’d done that.

And then last week to my delight a song suddenly materialized as if by magic out of the internets! Take a wissen:

I wrote the chiptune musics for that! It’s going to be on their next album, Secret Land of the Monkey Man. I am excite!

Link of the Month:
Tee Fury
It seems like there are a handful of websites that offer one daily t-shirt for sale every 24 hours, but I tend to like Tee Fury’s geekish offerings more often than any others’ designs. I follow their feed for easy updates!

Album of the Month:
Blue Scholars: Cinemetropolis
A damnably catchy album with an equally wonderful origin story: The local Seattleite duo of MC Geologic and DJ Sabzi funded the entire album through their fans via a Kickstarter campaign that ended up bringing in more than double the money they asked for! Geo has one of my favorite flows in all of hip-hop right now, and his lyrics are intelligent and clever. Sabzi pulls out some head-shakingly-good music for this project. Here, watch this video for “Fou Lee” (which is an Asian market on Beacon Hill in Seattle):

Game of the Month:
A Boy and His Blob
This is a gorgeous, soothing, adorable game. It’s a re-imagining of the insanely frustrating ’80s video game. In remaking it they removed all of the things that made the first game so difficult to actually play. The result is a strangely pastoral experience, like walking through a beautiful forest… with puzzle-solving. My favorite part: there’s a button whose sole purpose is to make the boy hug the blob. It’s so frikkin’ cute, and it serves no purpose other than to be cute.

I heart Julia Massey & The Five Finger Discount. Their previous album was my Album of the Month last April. I’ve seen them perform live in the last year more than any other music act except for maybe Three Ninjas. Their bass player was the best man at my wedding (this was pre-FFD days).

Well, they’re making a new album NOW: “Is There Room 4 Me?”

"Is There Room 4 Me?" by Julia Massey & The Five Finger Discount

It’s almost done, but they need a li’l help. They’ve started a Kickstarter page where you can go to help them out, and in return you can get some awexome JM+FFD swag! As of this posting they need LESS THAN $100 to reach their goal!

You know you love their music. You know you wanna hear their new album. You know you wanna help out. You know you want some cool swag. THERE AIN’T NO EXCUSE! Do it.

I’m not the only person who thinks you should!

EDIT 7/23: Update: They made it! Now they’re in “extra innings” where they can earn money to help promote the album. So don’t stop contributing now!

Link of the Month:
Popped Culture
A delightful blog that specializes in the mashups of various pop-culture icons. For example, the recent Josey Wales & The Pussycats:

Album of the Month:
Open Mike Eagle: Rappers Will Die of Natural Causes
Just like I did last year, I’ve named Mike Eagle’s new album as my Album of the Month BEFORE it is released! Don’t worry, you won’t have to wait long; it’s released on Tuesday 6/7. Here’s a video to tide you over:

It’s gunna be suh-weeet.

UPDATE: Here it be!
http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/rappers-will-die-natural-causes/id442636707

DVD of the Month:
The Middleman: The Complete Series
The Middleman was a small show that kinda slipped under everyone’s radar a few years ago. It quietly aired a dozen episodes on ABC Family, then disappeared. It’s a shame; it’s one of the geekiest, most gosh-darn fun shows I’ve seen in a good long while. It’s a TV show for people who love TV shows, Movies, and Comic Books. It was canceled before they got to make the final episode, so after you watch the series you should pick up the comic book they made of the finalé.

So, my friend Jason is bona-fide famous.

Not only has his Three Ninjas music been featured as my Album of the Month.

Not only was Three Ninjas my Musician of the Year for 2010.

Not only has he been on an episode of a very popular television show, featured in the Stranger (twice) and Seattle Weekly, interviewed on the radio and in the New York Times, for which he had an actual photo shoot that resulted in this bit of handsomeness:

Jason J. Brunet in the New York Times

Not only that, but last week The Today Show flew him out to new york just so that Al Roker could have the honor of talking with him for a few minutes:

And perhaps the icing on the cake? Mr. Jason J. Brunet now has a Wikipedia page about him. AND HE DIDN’T EVEN MAKE IT HIMSELF!

Oh, also his fans have a habit of taking photos of themselves with Jason’s Three Ninjas stickers covering their private parts (link is very NSFW).

Fame it up, Famestopher!

Whoops! forgot to do this until today (only 2 days late)

Link of the Month:
Dads are the Original Hipsters
Sorry hipsters, your dad was the original hipster and he was killing it back in the day. This site has photographic proof that no matter how cool you think you are, your kids will think you are an absolute dork. And they’ll be right.

Album of the Month:
The Asteroids Galaxy Tour: Fruit
This is an incredibly infectious and poppy album that has sweet hints of 60s spy jazz music liberally sprinkled thoughout its happy, bouncy, electro-pop sensibilities. Danish vocalist Mette Lindberg has a thin, girlish voice that I find incredibly appealing in such stand-out tracks as “Around the Bend” (which was featured in an iPhone commercial), “Golden Age,” and “Bad Fever.” Also they seem to have a song about Ghost Rider. Awesome fun.

Book of the Month:
Usagi Yojimbo: The Special Edition by Stan Sakai
It is a great shame of mine that I do not own any Usagi Yojimbo comics. You may remember him from some (strange) crossovers with TMNT, but Usagi has a life completely on his own, and is celebrating his 25th anniversary. Usagi Yojimbo is easily in the top five greatest comic book series of all time, and I would love to own every single issue. I’ll begin my collection with this extremely handsome edition that collects the first seven volumes of the series (from Fantagraphics) with many fantastic extras. Hopefully I will be able to continually add volumes to my collection.